3 Myths About Picking the NCAA Tournament

It's dinnertime on Monday; by now
you've surely filled out two brackets and plan to fill out three more. And
you'll reason things the same way you did last year and the year before.

But did you win any money last
year or the year before? I thought not.

If you abandon your familiar logic
and consider a new approach, you just might look like you know what you're doing
come Final Four weekend. Here are the issues you should think about:

+ Depth Is Key -- I've been
back and forth about the depth issue for years, but I think I've finally got it
figured out: It's overrated.

Syracuse and Ohio State will make
nice runs in the tournament and they will do so without great contributions from
their benches. Coaches adjust their approaches at least slightly during the
tournament, and, especially in OSU's case, Thad Matta is keenly aware of his
lack of depth. So he'll manage his games a little more.

Each half will be comprised of
five four-minute bursts. Television timeouts are longer and more frequent in the
tournament. Foul trouble certainly is a potential issue, but neither of these
teams lost any of their games this year because of it. And injuries? Well, you
might want to pray a little bit.

+ Freshmen Are Sophomores --
Every time you hear an analyst talk about how grown up some freshmen have become
because they've now got 35 college games under their belts, you should send me a
dollar. Make it ten dollars, actually.

But if the freshmen have grown up,
so, too, have the sophomores, juniors, seniors and even fifth-year players
against whom they'll be playing. But where the freshmen are still inexperienced
-- perhaps immature (<cough>DeMarcus Cousins</cough>) -- is in the area of a
high-pressure, single-elimination tournament. Don't buy the
freshmen-are-sophomores line.

+ A 12 Always Beats A 5 -- It's
always fashionable to pick one or two 12s over 5s because historically, this is
just some inexplicable danger zone for higher-seeded teams. Since the field
expanded to 64-ish teams, 12 seeds have won exactly 33 out of 100 first-round
games, a markedly better winning percentage than 11 seeds. Two No. 12s won last
year. North Carolina won the tournament last year as a 12 seed. Just kidding
about that last fact, but you know what I mean.

The bottom line here is that 12
seeds often win. But trying to predict which of the four 12 seeds will win when
the position only wins 33 percent of the time means you'll most likely pick an
upset where an upset won't happen, and then you'll pick the seeds to play out
where the upset actually does happen. And it's also a fact that this year's 12
seeds won't win one game.

So stay away from picking the
12-over-5 upset, but if you don't, if you absolutely must pick a No. 12 to win,
please don't tell everyone you knew Cornell was going to beat Temple. At least
give credit to Jay Bilas because he's the only reason you will have picked it.

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About John P. Wise

ColumnistEditor - One Great Season

Contactjpwise3@hotmail.com

Background

John P. Wise is a 15-year news veteran who lost a job last summer, then launched a project he first considered upon graduating from college in 1994. He spent the entire college football season on the road, traveling from one great college town to the next, covering America's greatest sport from the sideline for 15 straight weeks. Now that the college football season is over, Wise back in Brooklyn, writing a book about the great adventure. But his site -- http://onegreatseason.com -- is now more basketball-centric, so feel free to take a look and leave a comment.